O is for Outlaw (Kinsey Millhone 15)

"That's perfect." While I began the slow task of working the dropped stitches up through the rows, the cat picked her way across the floor and jumped up in my lap. I jerked the knitting up and said, "Whoa!" Dorothy must have weighed twenty pounds. She turned her backside to me and stuck her tail in the air like a pump handle, exhibiting her little spigot while she marched in place.

"She never does that. I don't know what's got into her. She must like you," Belmira said, turning up cards as she spoke.

"I'm thrilled."

"Well, would you look at this? The Ten of Wands, reversed." Bel was laying out a reading. She placed the Ten of Wands with the other cards on the table in some mysterious configuration. The card she'd assigned me, the Page of Swords, had now been covered by the Moon.

I freed one hand and cranked Dorothy's tail down, securing it with my right arm as I pointed to the cards. "What's that one mean?" I thought the Moon might be good, but the sisters exchanged a look that made me think otherwise.

Cordia said, "I told you she'd do this."

"The Moon stands for hidden enemies, dear. Danger, darkness, and terror. Not too good."

"No kidding."

She pointed to a card. "The Ten of Wands, reversed, represents obstacles, difficulties, and intrigues. And this one, the Hanged Man, represents the best you can hope for. "

"She doesn't want to hear that, Bel."

"I do. I can handle it."

"This card crowns you."

"What's that? I'm afraid to ask," I said.

"Oh, the Hanged Man is good. He represents wisdom, trials, sacrifice, intuition, divination, prophecy. This is what you want, but it isn't yours at present."

"She's trying to help with my knitting. You might at least leave her be until she finishes."

"I can do both," I said. Though, truthfully, Dorothy's presence was making the task difficult. The cat had rotated in my lap and now seemed intent on smelling my breath. She extended her nose daintily. I paused and breathed through my mouth for her. "What's that card?" I asked, while she butted my chin with her head.

"The Knight of Swords, which is placed at your feet. This is your own, what you have to work with. Skill, bravery, capacity, enmity, wrath, war, destruction."

"The wrath part sounds good."

"Not overall," Bel corrected. "Overall, you're screwed. You see this one? This card stands for pain, affliction, tears, sadness, desolation."

"Well, dang."

"Exactly. I'd say you're up poop creek without a roll of TP." Belmira turned up another card.

Dorothy climbed up on my chest, purring. She put her face in mine and we stared at each other. I glanced back at the tarot deck. Even I, believing none of this, could see the trouble I was in. Aside from the Hanged Man, there was a fellow burdened with heavy sticks, yet another fellow face down on the ground with ten swords protruding from his back. The card for judgment didn't seem to bode well either, and then there was the Nine of Wands, which showed a crankylooking man clinging to a staff, eight staves in a line behind him. That card was followed by a heart pierced with three swords, rain and clouds above.

By then, I'd succeeded in rescuing the lost stitches, and I reached around Dorothy to return the knitting to Cordia. I thought it was time to get down to business, so I asked Cordia what she could tell me about Mickey.

"I can't say I know all that much about him. He was extremely private. He worked as a bank guard until he lost his job in February. I used to see him going out in his uniform. He looked handsome, I must say.

"What happened?"

"About what?"

"How'd he lose his job?"

"He drank. You must have known that if you were married to him. Nine in the morning, he reeked of alcohol. I don't think he drank at that hour. This was left from the night before, fumes pouring through his skin. He never staggered, and I never once heard him slur his words. He wasn't loud or mean. He was always a gentleman, but he was losing ground."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I knew he drank, but it's hard to believe he reached a point where drinking interfered with his work. He was a cop in the old days when I was married to him."

"Is that right," she said.

"Was there anything else you could tell me about him? "

"He was quiet, no parties. Paid his rent on time until the last few months. No visitors except for the nasty fellow with all the chains."

I turned my attention from Dorothy. "Chains?"